11 septembre 2009

Facebook introduces status tagging...

Facebook introduces (this has been trending on twitter since yesterday) mentions in statuses and posts, copying the very @mentions of twitter. This will definitely not change the Facebook world but with time though it will bring a certain plus in the way people use Facebook...

First reminder should be that twitter did (and still is) changing the world of the interweb, being an extraordinary communicating interface. Facebook, the loser, is bringing the @mentions as a new feature to - as I said, contribute with a plus in the way we use Facebook and hopefully to retain people who have the twitterdream. I mean, seriously, it gets more difficult for me to convince friends who do not know twitter to join in - I have lost the 'mentions in any tweet' argument!

However, the fact is that, twitter is in no way an alternative to Facebook. These two are not supplementary but complementary. This very fact makes that I will surely not enjoy this new Facebook feature as much as I would have wasn't I on twitter. This is because since I am on twitter, I do not use Facebook (statuses for instance) in the same way. I no more (or extremely rarely) update my Facebook status to say what I am doing at present or even what I have been doing during the day. Indeed, the new Facebook itself no more has the "*YOUR NAME* is..." in the status box and replaced it by a "What's on your mind?".

I feel this feature is hence not coherent with the new way I use Facebook and with the new Facebook itself. I'm not saying it's a loser feature but definitely not an innovative and constructive one. This is what makes me feel kind of perplex and lost by this new feature.

Additionally, there is some real inconvenient. I mean, what I consider to be a real one which is that - as in many previous cases of Facebook upgrades - we (facebook users) do not have the upgrade at the same time.

We just have to wait till our time comes and that when we open our Facebook home page, there is a little message announcing us the feature if FINALLY available for us. I feel this does reduce the interest in the feature, the difference has been observed when there was the countdown for the Facebook usernames, available for everyone at the same time. This was an obligation for Facebook, so as to give its users equal chances to have their desired username. And this very difference is called Quality ...like in Quality Service.